


there's a ghost in the back of this room

by teadrinkr



Category: La Reina del Sur (TV), Queen of the South (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Jeresa, Post 3x06, Spoilers for 3x06, i love this ship so much i came back from a two year hiatus for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15519510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teadrinkr/pseuds/teadrinkr
Summary: When Teresa's nightmares keep her up, James is there.





	there's a ghost in the back of this room

**Author's Note:**

> post 3x06. title is from "nightmares" by all time low

_She sees Guero. They’re leaving the doctor’s house, running from Cortez again. She hears bullets ring off every available surface, burying themselves in whatever obstructs their path. She sees Pote and James, pistols ablaze as they cover a path to the car, and for a moment Teresa thinks,_ We’re going to make it, _before she hears a grunt to her left and Guero goes down._

_Her heart stops. “Guero!” She hears herself scream, falls to her knees to see a patch of blood growing in his side. She feels someone grab her arm; it’s James. He hoists Guero’s arm over his shoulder, and they continue limping forward. When finally, finally, they make it to the car, Teresa climbs into the backseat with Guero in her lap. Pote floors the accelerator and they fly out of the yard, gunfire chasing them as they escape Camila Vargas again._

_Again, they sit in silence as the car moves up the highway, leaving Imala behind, yet another prison that failed to contain them. The whole time, Teresa strokes Guero’s hair as he drifts in and out of sleep. Again, she sees Pote pull into the Taco Bell parking lot and ask them what they want, hears herself say no, and ask Guero if he wants anything. Again, her heart stops, and again, “Guero? Pote, he’s not breathing!” Again, Pote pulls her out of the car, putting his ear against Guero’s cold lips, trying to catch the sound of breath, before turning to Teresa with his eyebrows drawn, sadness in his eyes._

_Teresa’s breath catches in her chest. “No no no…No!”_

_Except when she peers into the car to catch a last glimpse of her first love, it’s not Guero’s body she sees. It’s James’, bullet wound clotted with blood in_ James _’ side, James, lifeless in the backseat of the SUV. “James!” she cries, struggling against Pote’s arms to reach for one more touch of his familiar jacket, before she feels another hand on her shoulder and she spins around. And she screams._

_Guero is standing behind her, bruised, beaten, blood seeping from the shot in his stomach and the slash in his leg. She should feel relieved that he’s alive, but when she looks up at his face to seek some sort of comfort, his eyes are cold and dead. He opens his mouth. “You had to choose, Teresa.”_

_She can only let out a scream._

Teresa gasps, shooting up in bed, feeling fresh moisture on her cheeks as she tries to control her sobs.

“Hey, hey,” she feels the touch on her shoulder again, and sees not Guero, but James, who is fully alive, wearing a grey t-shirt and sweatpants, hair mussed from sleep. He doesn’t ask her what’s wrong, he knows what’s wrong and how wrong everything is. He just sits next to her on the bed and she lets him slip an arm around her waist, letting her head rest on his chest. “Shhh, Teresa, you were screaming.”

In a futile effort, she tries to wipe some of the tears away so she can form a coherent sentence, but her voice comes out as a croak anyway. “Did I wake you?”

She feels him shake his head. “No, it’s okay. I don’t sleep much anyway.”

She sniffles, feeling a fresh wave of tears on her cheeks. She echoes the words she once told him after she’d had another one of her closest friends dead in her arms. “It hurts so much.”

His arms tighten around her, pulling her against his strong, comforting warmth. “I know.”

It’s there with him where she falls back into a light, restless sleep, before she wakes up crying from another nightmare. This time Pote dies; she has found his body inside their old Malta apartment, but this time he doesn’t wake up spitting blood. He doesn’t wake up at all.

Her screaming brings James running back into her room to wrap her in his arms and whisper into her hair until her sobs subside. “Shhhh, _Teresita_ ,” he uses Pote’s name for her, “it’s okay. Pote is fine, yeah? He’s sleeping right in the other room, his hand will be fine, it’s healing up real nice right now, but let’s not wake him up. He needs rest. It’s okay, Teresa, we’re all okay.”

She can feel the immediate hesitation after he says that, because Guero is not okay right now. Guero is not okay because Guero is dead, and he’s never going to come back and that’s all her fault. Because she was in Europe for nearly eight months and she didn’t spare one second to go look for him. He spent eight months being tortured by Cortez, and not once did he give her up.

At this thought she begins to cry again, burrowing into James’ side. “I’m sorry, Teresa,” he whispers.

She realises that he’s been stroking her hair to calm her, and she reaches up shakily to touch his hand. He immediately stops, and she croaks, “No, it’s- it’s nice.” She feels James nod, and his hand continues. She leans her head against the junction of his neck and his shoulder and lets the same light sleep claim her again.

When she wakes again, it’s not because of a nightmare. She’s sure they haven’t gone away, but she realises that the disturbance had been James untangling their limbs, about to leave.

“James,” she whispers. “Where are you going?” In any other situation, she might hate how weak her voice sounds at that moment, but now she can’t quite bring herself to care.

“Back to my room,” he says. “I was trying to be quiet again, but…do you need…?” he trails off.

“Will you- will you stay here?” she asks, softer.

“Yeah,” he answers, “of course. You sure?”

Teresa’s voice is stronger as she answers. “Yeah.” She pulls back the covers to invite him in with her.

But James hesitates for a moment, and her resolve weakens again. “Unless…” Did she assume wrong?

“No,” he assures her, sliding in. “I want to; I just don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you, Teresa.”

“You wouldn’t be,” she says honestly. “I asked you.” She pulls her lips into the ghost of a small smile, even though she can feel the tear stains under her swollen eyes.

James stretches out next to her, propping the pillow a little higher under his neck so Teresa can tuck herself under his chin again. The position is so similar to the way they had woken up just days before that her heart aches a little.

“Thank you,” she says, lifting her head to look into James’ eyes. He meets her gaze, a warmth she’s seldom seen alight within them, before he leans forward to press his lips against her forehead. After a prolonged moment, he pulls away, she lays down, and he resumes stroking her hair before they both drift off to sleep.

The fourth time Teresa wakes up, she can’t recall having dreamt anything than unforgiving blackness, and she can feel her cheeks are dry and tearless. But when she feels thrashing and shaking to her right, under her head, she realises that this time, James is having a nightmare.

He’s mumbling urgently, “Suzie! Get out of there, the house is- Suzie, get away from the house! Suzie, NO!” before his whispers devolve into gasps and his shoulders begin to shake with silent sobs.

Teresa sits up, the covers pooling around her waist, leans over him and and grabs his shoulder to try to wake him up. “James! James, wake up, it’s Teresa, _solo estabas soñando_.”

His eyes fly open, already wet with unshed tears, and he sits up suddenly, almost bashing his forehead into Teresa’s. Seeing as she’s the only one there, he sits up slowly and drags a hand across his eyes, slumping forward. “Fuck.”

“I didn’t know you had nightmares,” Teresa said, troubled, rubbing a hand over the tattooed web on his shoulder. “I’ve been waking you up all night. Why didn’t you let me know? How did I miss them?”

James leans into her touch, and Teresa takes the chance to slip her arms around him in a way reminiscent of the way he first had for her. She feels him sigh. When he doesn’t speak up, she goes first. “Was it the little girl?”

She feels him twitch against her, and regrets her decision almost immediately before he lifts his head. His dark eyes are so full of sorrow, so sad, and so _not James_ that it breaks her heart to even look at him. James is full of fire, full of urgency and determination, that seeing him this broken makes her want to burst into tears again. But she reels herself in, and uses her left thumb to touch his face and wipe away some of the wetness gathering on his cheekbones.

When he speaks, his voice scratches in his throat. “Like I said, I don’t sleep much. And I can’t stop thinking about her. She shouldn’t have died, and it was entirely my fault she did. And I think about her parents, and her two siblings who are orphans now, because I took their mom and their dad and their sister away. It’s all my fault, Teresa, there’s no way to get around it. But maybe I deserve it, this voice in the back of my head screaming at me for the rest of my life, reminding me of how I tore apart that family.”

Teresa can’t say anything for a moment, remembering the moment when someone destroyed her family. When she regains her voice, James has turned his head back down, pulled away, lost in thought. She touches his cheek so that he’ll look at her again and grabs his hand, twisting his fingers between her own. “James.” She hesitates. “I was once those two girls left behind without parents.”

His breath hitches. “Teresa…”

“No, let me continue,” she says. “I was, but look at me now. I know the pain, but still. I grew up, and I learned how to live, and sure, it was hard sometimes, but I still turned out okay, wouldn’t you say?” She gives him a small smile and bumps his shoulder with her own.

He lets out a dry chuckle. “You turned out more than okay, Teresa.”

“And you’re here now. You told me yourself, James, that you wanted to do things differently. That has to count for something, don’t you think? Even if Finch told you to, you didn’t want to kill that man. You thought it could be done differently. And even if it doesn’t seem like a big difference in the world, it’s still a difference. A big one for you, and for me. I know that you have a good heart,” she presses her hand against his chest, “that’s what matters.” When he doesn’t reply right away, she stiffens, worrying she’s said too much, but James stops her, cupping her cheek.

“I don’t deserve you.” She’s about to protest, but he cuts her off before she can. “I know. But you’re the best thing that could have happened to me.” His eyes meet hers and hold a gaze so silent that it seems louder than a scream, before James whispers again, “Can I kiss you?”

Teresa replies by leaning forward to close the distance between them, bringing her hands up to stroke his cheekbones as their lips meet. 

Kissing James is like coming home. After the months she spent alone following what she thought was Guero’s death, it’s the best feeling in the world.

She sleeps through the rest of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> i binged queen of the south in four days and now i'm obsessed with jeresa. come scream with me on tumblr @tea-drinkr  
> \---  
> leave me a comment if u like! (tryna improve my writing especially after being gone for years lol)


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